


Seven Years

by daggerpen



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 07:23:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4051372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daggerpen/pseuds/daggerpen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders and Hawke fall in love. My final entry for #anderspositive week.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Years

**Author's Note:**

> Heads up, there are a few references early on to this being my custom Hawke rather than the default Garrett Hawke. Nothing too in detail, though.

He falls in love with a Chasind smuggler with a wicked grin and the most intricate tattoos Anders has ever seen.

Anders has few friends in Kirkwall. His patients are loyal, to be sure - protective, even - but they’re not exactly the type who’ll sit down to have a friendly drink. And as for the mage underground? They all make a point of staying as detached as they can, hardly even using  names if possible - the less for an interrogator to learn from anyone captured, the better. But Hawke? Hawke is…

Anders has never met anyone like Hawke before. The closest was the Warden-Commander, an elven rogue with a gentle voice that belied the fire in her eyes. She had no magic, either, but she stood with the mages, too, stood by him through all the trouble Anders knew he wasn’t worth. But she had been quiet, subtle, playing games and expectations. It was nothing Anders could hold against her, even after she’d left - it took politicking to protect herself and her friends. But it only makes Hawke all the more astonishing.

Because Hawke is loud, and irreverent, and everything Anders wishes he could still be. The son and brother of two apostates, he understands more than any non-mage Anders has ever known, and when Anders talks he _listens_. He’s everything Anders could ask of a friend and more than he deserves and damn him, how _greedy_ is he to want _more_?

So he tells himself that it’s just a passing infatuation. It is a distraction. It will pass. He has a history of this kind of thing, a thought not entirely his own reminds him. He’s only just lost Karl, a wound too fresh and too deep, and he’s not-

He can’t do this, not now. He can’t sort out what of this is loss and what is admiration and what is loneliness, or even what of this is him and what is Justice and how much of a line there even _is_ anymore. He’s too much of a mess for any of this.

It’s not like Hawke’s interested, anyway.

* * *

He falls in love with a Grey Warden healer with permanent dark eye circles and freckles on his hands.

Hawke is a thoroughly flighty creature. He has no illusions about this. He has always been and will always be too thoroughly a scoundrel, built to slip in and out of things, to come and go as he pleases. He’s happy to help where he can, but to pursue a title? Politics? He doesn’t have it in him. He’d wander away within the week. Or be chased out by a mob of offended nobles, at least.

Before he met Anders, he’d never really regretted that.

Because Anders is… Anders amazes him. Hawke had admired him from the moment they’d met, respected the way the mage would throw himself into healing with no thought to himself. Anders was loud and rebellious and driven with a focus Hawke could only envy, not to mention being a charming bastard in his better moods, and looking back, Hawke is amazed how long it had taken him to recognize it.

The realization comes maybe six months into their friendship, the sudden, overwhelming understanding hitting him all at once. He’s sitting in the Hanged Man when it happens, casual chatter and a late dinner as usual. They’re discussing mages again, Anders practically inhaling the tavern’s dodgy stew between words, exhausted in every way, and Hawke has just enough time to be amazed that Anders has worked himself to the bone in his Clinic and he still has this much fire before he realizes there’s more than admiration warming him when Anders speaks.

And oh, fuck him, what is he possibly thinking? That Anders is going to take up with some farmer-turned-smuggler-turned-noble layabout with nothing to offer him but some cheap jokes and money he won’t accept in the first place? Please.

Like Anders has time for him, anyway.

* * *

Time is a precious commodity where Anders is concerned. The dual weights of his Clinic and the mage underground weigh heavy on his shoulders, stealing away his hours, and he has little left to spare.

He gives it all to Hawke regardless. Justice grumbles, but he has, slowly, come to understand the nature of mortals, that Anders can not, _can not_ match a spirit’s intensity. And so he spends his time by Hawke’s side, laughing in taverns and patching wounds after fights.

It’s exhausting. But maybe he needs it, too. Most of Hawke’s work is helping people, anyway, mages frequently, and Anders… doesn’t mind the company. And Hawke…

Fuck him, Hawke is _flirting_ with him. Anders had tried to deny it at first, but it didn’t take long before Hawke had made his interest very apparent. And Anders…

Anders should tell him no. He should turn him down, now, unambiguously. He’ll bring nothing good into Hawke’s life, and Hawke deserves so, so much better than him. It’s not fair, for Anders to lead him on when they can have nothing with any future. But he can’t. He _can’t_.

Three years is a very long time.

* * *

Three years is a long time to hold out hope.

Hawke has second- and third-guessed himself by now more times than he can possibly count. Has he been reading things wrong? Is Anders even really interested in him? Hawke’s sure he’s flirted back a few times, hasn’t he? Has he been misreading things?

“Just kiss him already,” Isabela tells him. “Romance isn’t really my strong suit,” Varric tells him. He hasn’t really had the nerve to ask anyone else for advice.

Maybe he’s being selfish. Maker knows he asks enough from Anders. The man has a million things to do and here he is, begging him for help and healing and company because he enjoys his company too damned much. Hawke does his best to give it back, sure, but Anders hardly ever accepts. Money, occasionally, only ever for the Clinic - never for Anders himself. He’ll ask for help, sometimes, with some odd task or another, and Hawke’s pretty sure it’s something to do with helping other apostates, but Anders refuses to tell him more. It’s for Hawke’s own protection, Anders says, and Hawke has no idea if he means it or if he doesn’t trust him or a million other possibilities.

He’s tried to get over it. He really has. But every time he thinks he’s almost moved on, Anders will say something, start to flirt and stop himself, and damn him, then he’s falling all over again.

Maybe it’s just time to admit defeat.

* * *

It takes the man who’d taken Karl from him for Anders to admit defeat.

He’d wanted to keep Hawke out of this. It’s not that he doesn’t trust the other man - far from it; Anders can’t believe how much the man does for mages already. Nor is it that Hawke hasn’t offered - he has, time and time again.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust Hawke. It’s that he doesn’t trust _himself_. What if Hawke gets hurt? What if he’s discovered? Anders doesn’t know if he can deal with that. And he doesn’t know if he could avoid compromising a mission if Hawke was in danger. There’s a reason the rest of the underground avoids personal involvement with the other members, after all.

But no one else will stop Ser Alrik, and Anders is at his wit’s end. He can think of no one else who can help. And Hawke, damn it all, is suited for this like none other. If anyone can slip in and find the evidence Anders needs, it’s him.

So he asks Hawke for help. He lays out all that he has, and even now he’s half sure Hawke won’t believe him, because he is paranoid and foolish and he has asked Hawke to jump at far too many shadows.

“I wouldn’t let you face this alone,” Hawke says instead, and Anders has never loved him more.

* * *

Hawke has never been afraid of Anders.

Anders’ possession had never exactly been easy to forget. It comes up, in fights and conversation and in frustrated, exhausted flickers of blue across pale skin. But Hawke has never before worried that Anders could ever turn on anyone who didn’t deserve it.

It doesn’t surprise him when Justice takes over with Ser Alrik. If anything, he’d have been amazed if he didn’t. But Hawke almost freezes when Anders - Justice - whoever - turns on the girl, and Hawke barely gets the words out in time.

Hawke had never really understood Anders’ belief that he had “corrupted” Justice. Hawke couldn’t see how a man as dedicated as Anders and a literal spirit of justice could possibly corrupt each other.

And he still doesn’t. Because Hawke isn’t afraid of Anders now, despite what the mage may think.

“You’ve seen what I am,” Anders tells him, and Hawke has. He’s seen a man who cares so deeply that it threatens to overwhelm him. And he’s seen him stop himself before he made the worst mistake of his life.

Hawke doesn’t understand, exactly, how Anders’ possession works. But he’s seen the man at his worst, and he trusts in Anders, and he trusts in Justice, to have the will to do what’s right.

* * *

He doesn’t have the will to resist anymore.

Maker help him, but he doesn’t. It’s selfish and foolish and nothing near what Hawke deserves, but Hawke still wants him despite everything and when they kiss Hawke tastes like mint and beeswax and he never wants to stop.

Life with Hawke is better than anything he could have ever dreamed of. Anders isn’t sure he’ll ever come to believe it entirely. Hawke spoils him as much as Anders will allow, like he doesn’t even know what else to do with his money, financing the Clinic and trying to buy him new clothes and dragging him out to fine restaurants and more, and Anders wishes he’d understand that the simple fact that Hawke loves him back is more than he could have ever asked for.

The day with the Arishok may be the worst of his life. He can only watch, helpless, as the blade runs Hawke through, every healer’s instinct he has screaming at him - blood, so much blood, and the blade had barely missed the spine and Hawke is _standing_ and Hawke is going to die. And all he can think about is the little things, stupid, fleeting tactile moments, the way Hawke drags his fingers through his hair, the little catch in his breath before a low chuckle, the taste of mint and beeswax, and he’s going to lose it all.

When it is over, he doesn’t care about Meredith or the templars or apostasy. All that matters to him is Hawke, the blood on his hands and the hole in his stomach and no, not him too, please.

Not him too.

* * *

Hawke will not let the templars take Anders too.

The mantle of the Champion weighs heavy on his shoulders most days, responsibilities he’d never asked for and the safety of a whole city on his hands. But it comes with power, too, the power to keep the templars from his door. It takes deals he’d rather not make and far, far more politicking than Hawke has ever wanted, but Anders is safe.

He only wishes that could be enough. Because Hawke may be able to shield his friends, but he cannot shield Anders’ cause, and that may destroy his lover as surely as any templar’s blade.

* * *

Anders is going to die.

He doesn’t know when the realization settles in, watching everything he loves fall apart in his hands. He doesn’t know when the fantasy becomes possibility, when possibility becomes plan. But Knight-Commander Meredith has sent for the Right of Annulment, and the Divine will grant it, and there is nothing more Anders can do.

It kills him, that he cannot spare Hawke this. That he cannot do this alone, that he must betray the man he loves, that Justice has become Vengeance has become the only road he can see.

He does his best to shield him. He will not tell him what will happen, will not put his hands on this more than he must.

Anders is going to die. He had known this from the start. But he had hoped, at least, that it would be at templar hands.

He wishes he could have spared Hawke from this, at least.

* * *

They’re expecting Hawke to kill him.

The realization hits Hawke like a blow, overwhelming, as he sees the faces of his companions, Merrill’s pleas and Sebastian’s rage and Fenris’s coldness and Anders, _Anders_ and he can’t

No

No

Not him too

_Not him too_

He will not, he will not he will _not_

It is all too much, the weight of what has happened and the death around them and Anders in front of him, back to him, waiting, and he needs to move, needs to fight and it is crushing him, choking him and he wants nothing more than to collapse. But he can’t.

“Help… help me defend the mages,” he chokes out. Because he cannot, will not lose him. How could Anders even _think_ otherwise?

* * *

Fugitive life is even harder than he remembered. His heart is heavy, now, weighed down with guilt and the blood on his hands, Anders reeling with the doubt he never expected to live to have.

But Hawke is with him. Hawke loves him, still, despite everything. And when Anders kisses him, he tastes like mint and beeswax, and Anders is home again.

 


End file.
